


a series of unfortunate deaths

by hesselives



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Crack, Humor, Immortal Husbands, M/M, andy is very tired, but so is joe, joe's incurable romanticism, necessity is the mother of invention, statistics will get ya, when you live long enough, wildly inaccurate moments in history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25230580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hesselives/pseuds/hesselives
Summary: Five times Nicky dies a mundane accidental death + one time Joe is there to heroically intervene.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 163
Kudos: 1485





	1. part 1

1\. The corset incident, 1552

Burning heretics at the stake is becoming a real problem. Again.

King Henry II of France is setting Protestants on fire left and right, and nobody is trying to stop him. So the three of them hatch a plot to infiltrate the King’s court – a plan that is markedly different than the last one (namely, Andy and Quynh storming in with blades and storming out with freed heretics).

Nicky, with his aristocratic Genoesian good looks, is elected by Andy and Joe to befriend Queen Catherine de’ Medici, and convince her to tell her husband, “Hey, ease up a bit on the religious persecution.”

It is not the most solid plan they’ve ever come up with (“I would like to use my veto power,” Nicky says, which is promptly ignored). But it aligns with their most recent shift in strategy from blow-shit-up-and-flee to lay-low-and-do-espionage.

It takes Nicky (or rather, Nicolo) a few months of schmoozing and dangling questionably-procured old world antiquities in front of the Queen’s art curator for him to finally be invited to court.

What he was not aware of was that the Queen had mandated all court attendees to wear corsets, for the ludicrous reason of “thick waists are offensive to my eyes.” Nicky had thought he’d seen it all these past few centuries, but royalty everywhere seem determined to one-up each other in lunacy, one generation after the other.

And so Nicky finds himself standing morosely in front of a mirror, with Joe diligently and lovingly cutting off his air supply as he tightens the cheapest corset they could find around his waist. Andy, on the other hand, is of no help at all, as she is too busy laughing hysterically on the floor.

(Nicky is privately glad that at least for a brief moment, the haunted look in her eyes is replaced with something brighter. Even if it’s thoroughly and humiliatingly at his expense.)

Outwardly, he huffs and complains, shoving his legs into silk stockings and stupid balloon-like pants, then walks stiffly out onto the streets where the art curator is impatiently waiting with his fancy horse and fancy carriage. (“My carriage is, uh, in the shop,” he had cleverly told the curator when asked why he needed a ride.)

When they arrive in front of the palace, the curator gives Nicky a quick glance-over and gasps when he sees that Nicky’s waist is still several egregious centimeters too thick. He shoves Nicky back inside the carriage and immediately grabs hold of the corset strings, bracing his foot against the carriage floor to give the strings a proper yank.

Nicky’s hand flies to his diaphragm as he starts choking on air.

“Good!” the curator says critically. “If you can’t breathe, you can be properly presented to Her Majesty.”

Nicky wheezes as he stumbles out of the carriage, black spots starting to swim at the edge of his vision.

He has the vague thought that maybe he shouldn’t have had breakfast. (It was a large breakfast. Joe makes the best omelets.)

He somehow survives the first half-hour of mingling and inane small talk among the nobles, but then the curator steers him towards the Queen (who has just arrived, fashionably late), and the second he bends into a bow, his corset seizes all his internal organs in a stranglehold. And it doesn’t let go.

Thus, Nicolo the Antiquities Guy meets a rather embarrassing demise, right in front of the Queen herself.

(The nobles stare at him and waffle on whether or not they should help, but ultimately they wait too long and end up sipping more wine as servants arrive to drag his body away.)

Nicky comes to with a loud gasp in the back of a moving wagon.

He immediately pats a hand around his severely bruised waist, absently noting that the corset is gone.

Ugh, good riddance. He hops off the wagon with a wince and resigns himself to walking all the way back to their apartment.

(“ _Sacre bleu!_ Where has he gone?” the driver later exclaims, as he arrives at the cemetery empty-wagoned.)

Joe is incensed that no-one lifted a finger to help the love of his life, and he pulls an all-nighter maniacally designing and sewing a brand new corset, using the power of contrasting colors and optical illusion to make it so that Nicky can both breathe and be the envy of the entire court.

This turns out to have a larger cascading effect than intended.

Not only do the King and Queen get distracted from heretic-burning by the sudden advent of nouveau corsetry sweeping through their court, but the entire Catholic church has placed orders for color-blocking robes, which keeps Joe horrendously busy and Andy thoroughly dumbfounded.

And even though they really, really loathe the Catholic church, they continue fulfilling orders, somehow hoping that this will be enough to prevent the church from doing anything horrible ever again.

+

2\. The bicycle incident, 1864

Somehow, they end up in France again, where civil unrest is reaching an explosive peak over the fight for workers’ rights. They are now a team of four (welcome aboard, Booker), and none of them have any fond memories of France. And – as they watch industrial enforcers violently beat down workers who try to organize – they surmise they are unlikely to have any this time around.

They are, generally speaking, very old and very tired. And so they’re rather cranky when their overall plan involves upending their circadian rhythm, sleeping during the day and sneaking about at night.

Andy straps on a blade and an unsettling number of knives, as she goes off to assassinate enforcers in their sleep. She wipes the blood off with more annoyance than usual.

Booker huddles under a wide hat and thick coat, as he organizes secret labor strike meetings in various musty basements. The shadows under his eyes sink in even deeper.

Nicky and Joe mostly look after the children, intercepting them at dawn with a few coins and sending them back home instead of letting them step foot inside the horrid factories that force them to squeeze into machines that constantly break down.

Unfortunately, their parents catch wind of this and start chasing them down, either to yell at them for inadvertently teaching their kids that money _does_ grow on trees, or to yell at them for not giving out _enough_ coins.

This leads Nicky to check out a new thing called a bicycle, which he thinks is a strange contraption, but the saleswoman makes it sound exciting and low-maintenance (“horses poop, bicycles don’t!”). So Nicky ends up buying one and wobbling around on it for the better part of a day.

Nicky feels ridiculous as he propels forward in drunken zig-zags, but Joe assures him that he looks dashing. (The stares from other people on the street indicate differently. But Joe has always been biased. Well, almost always.)

The main thing is that it moves faster than angry parents. (The second thing is that the wind feels nice in his face, and the third thing is that his calves are looking much nicer. Shapely, even.)

Nicky tries to explain this to Andy, who is both officially their chief executive officer and unofficially their chief financial officer.

“I just—” she sighs heavily. “We’re supposed to _blend in_ , and now you’re that weird guy on the street who thinks you’re too good for walking.”

“Do they really say that?” Nicky asks, frowning.

“We have never let other people’s opinions dictate what we do, darling,” Joe proclaims.

“Big talk from someone who used to be a Crusader,” Andy mutters.

“That was, like, a million years ago—”

“This whole conversation is irrelevant to me, so I’m going to bed now,” Booker says to no-one in particular.

“Maybe,” Nicky says optimistically, “I’m meant to help usher in a new age of technology. Maybe destiny led me to this bicycle to promote efficiency. The less time people spend on commuting to and from work, the more time they can spend with their family and friends.”

“Well-said,” Joe says proudly.

“That’s horseshit,” Andy says flatly. “You know what? I’m too tired for this. Do what you want. Save the children. Feel the wind of destiny on your face as you cycle around town. Buy Joe a bicycle. Buy everyone a bicycle. I’m going to fucking sleep.”

“Good night,” Joe says a little too loudly.

Nicky stares after her as she slams her bedroom door closed. Then he looks over at Joe. “Do you want a bicycle too?”

Joe winks at him. “No, my intrepid explorer. I feel the wind of destiny every time I look at you. I don’t need a bicycle for that.”

It doesn’t really make sense, but Nicky smiles anyway. “Okay, my love.”

At the next break of dawn, Joe decides to hunker down early and catch some more sleep, so Nicky shuffles outside by himself with his bicycle and pocket full of coins. He braces one foot on a pedal, and does a few skips with his other foot until it hops onto the other pedal and he finds proper balance.

The kids run alongside his bicycle, stretching their hands out and asking for rides (and coins). Their cheeks are ruddy and fat, and as he grins fondly at them, Nicky thinks that maybe he’ll have one good memory of France after all.

But of course, destiny has a wry sense of humor when it comes to immortals, and he hears the kids shriek too late as he careens right into the side of a solidly built carriage.

The bicycle crumples like wet paper, while the carriage trundles off, not even suffering a scratch.

Nicky lays there miserably on the cold hard cobblestone as morning traffic picks up and continues to flow around him like water around a rock. It’s fine. People are busy. They have places to go.

He’ll just close his eyes for a bit. Just for a minute.

The next thing he knows, he’s shaken awake and a sudden pain blooms behind his head. He can feel the hole there start to knit itself together, and reaches behind to ascertain how much blood he’s lost.

He blinks rapidly, as his beloved’s pale face (which is surrounded by a horde of other tiny faces) comes into focus.

“Nicky? Are you all right? Talk to me,” Joe says, kneeling beside him and slowly lifting him up.

“Fine,” Nicky coughs. He looks askance at the pile of metal that used to be a bicycle. “I ruined the bicycle though.”

“Mister, you weren’t breathing!” a stern-faced little girl says with her hands on her hips. “My mama is a nurse and she says that when you don’t breathe, you’re dead. So we went to find Mister Joe and told him you were dead.” She scrunches her nose. “But now you’re not. I guess.”

“I guess not,” Nicky says, widening his eyes innocently.

“I had no idea bicycles were so goddamn dangerous,” Joe says, glaring at the bicycle like it had personally annihilated his family. (Well, it did. Sort of.)

“No, no, it was my fault,” Nicky sighs. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

Joe shakes his head. “Well, we’re not going to let the bicycle win. I’m going to buy you another one, but you need to protect your head next time.” His brow furrows as he thinks hard. “I believe I still have my army helmet from the last Napoleonic war. Why don’t you wear that?”

“Why do you still have that? We lost that war.”

“You are missing the point, darling. I happen to like your beautiful head and we’re going to keep it that way with—” Joe cradles Nicky’s head in both hands. “—a nice sturdy helmet.”

“If you say so, Joe,” Nicky says agreeably.

Andy and Booker both roll their eyes the next time Nicky ventures out on his brand new bicycle, looking like a weird guy who’s too good for walking _and_ a weird guy who doesn’t realize that the Napoleonic wars have been over for several decades.

It isn’t until the early 1900s, when bicycle accidents hit an all-time high but bicycle fatalities hit an all-time low, that they reluctantly concede that bicycles and helmets really do go together.

+

3\. The fire incident, 1887

New York City is highly unpleasant.

“You say that about every city we go to,” Joe says, raising an eyebrow at Andy.

“Am I wrong?” she says.

“Well, no,” he says, matter-of-factly. “But New York has pizza.”

(Nicky glares at him in deep disapproval.)

“The pizza is good,” Andy concedes. “Although it’s not baklava.” She swings back around to her original point. “People are always unpleasant and so cities are always unpleasant. I would like to retire on an uninhabited island.”

“We get to retire?” Booker looks up from his newspaper. “When?”

“When we die,” she says philosophically.

“Maybe when we recruit more of us,” Nicky ponders. “We can do team rotations. A century for Team A and a century for Team B.”

Booker glowers at him. “I’m the newbie. So by that calculation, it’s going to take another two thousand years just to get enough people for a Team B.”

“And it’s that kind of positive attitude that’s going to make those two thousand years just fly by,” Joe says flatly.

“Let’s pool our collective positive attitude and figure out what we’re going to do about the criminal syndicates here,” Andy says with generous restraint. “The Italian and Jewish mafias are growing like weeds. And the Irish gangs are none too happy about it. It’s going to escalate into a bloodbath if they can’t establish stable leadership and territory agreements.”

“So basically we…identify who has true leadership potential and a level head that prioritizes business over violence. And we make sure to clear the way for them.” Nicky tilts his head. “That sound about right?”

“That’s putting it nicely, but yeah,” Andy says. If there’s any upside to being stuck for eternity with the same handful of undying people, it’s that they know each other really, really well. Which makes team meetings very, very short.

“All right then,” Andy continues. “Joe, you and I will handle the Italian and Jewish side. Booker and Nicky, you handle the Irish side. We’ll reconvene back here in two weeks.”

“You got it, boss,” Joe says blithely before turning to kiss Nicky. “Farewell, moon beam. I shall see you in my dreams.”

Nicky indulges him, as he presses his forehead against Joe’s. “Farewell, sun star. I’ll be waiting.”

Booker studies a patch of mold with a bored expression. Andy sighs through her nose and pulls out her pocket watch. “Tick tock, guys. Crime doesn’t wait.”

Booker and Nicky end up at a horse racing circuit, where the bets are rumored to be handled by the largest and oldest Irish gang, the Whyos.

“I wonder if they, like, voted on the name, or—?” Nicky muses.

Booker shrugs. “Better than the Dead Rabbits, which used to control Manhattan before the Whyos took over.”

“Whatever happened to old-school syndicates that were just—named after the cities they were from?”

“Times were simpler back then, I suppose,” Booker says, pulling out his binoculars to ostensibly observe the racehorses but in reality eyeing one of the two Whyos leaders who seems to be getting into a heated argument with a horse trainer.

Nicky casually leans against a balustrade, canting his ear towards that direction. He feels the comforting clack of the handgun strapped inside his suit.

They down a few drinks and place a few bets, chatting amiably with fellow gamblers whose tongues loosen with a couple free whiskeys. They learn too much about the local whorehouses and not enough about the gang’s operations. But it’s not bad for a day’s work.

They rent a shabby apartment that sits directly across the street from a saloon where more suits than labor uniforms brush through its doors. Booker, with his lighter features, takes off in the evening to check out a rumored rally where the Irish are gathering to protest the Italians and Jewish immigrants taking their jobs. Nicky stays behind to watch the comings and goings of the saloon clientele.

It’s exceedingly boring.

He digs through his pocket for a pack of cigarettes, and shuffles through dusty drawers until he finds an old box of matchsticks. “Hello, friend,” he says gratefully.

He lights up a cigarette and takes a deep drag, savoring the sting of it in his lungs. He lifts a hand to wave away the smoke before he remembers that Joe isn’t here to admonish him about the smell. (“It clings to everything!” he always says.)

The tobacco lingers pleasantly inside his head, and it isn’t long before he dozes off against the window, the streetlamps already lit with the onset of evening.

And it isn’t long before his head drops forward, the sudden jolt startling him awake to a horrific blast of heat and thick acrid smoke.

“Oh fuck,” Nicky chokes out dismally, as the immensely flammable room starts splintering apart, the flames racing along the edges of the walls.

He drops to the floor, coughing into his sleeve, feeling like his lungs are on fire. He tries crawling out towards the staircase, before remembering that he and Booker had decided on the fifth floor due to its optimal vantage point.

His coughs turn violent as he attempts to slide down the stairs on his backside, keeping his body as low to the ground as possible.

His last thought before the smoke consumes his airways is, _Oh, Joe is going to be so mad at me._

He wakes up in a back alley, with Booker looming worriedly over him.

“You okay?” he asks, pulling out a flask. “You really died back there. Had to drag you out by your suspenders before anyone could see us. Oh, I don’t have water, but I have whiskey.”

“I’ll take it,” Nicky says with a raspy voice, groaning as he reaches for it.

Just as he’s about ready to gulp it down, Joe appears at the end of the alleyway, like a detective who’s finally found the last piece of the puzzle.

“I knew it,” Joe says grimly. He pats his hands all over Nicky’s body, as if checking to see if every hair is in place. “I knew something was wrong. I could feel it.”

Nicky nods and lifts his hand again to bring the flask to his very chapped, very parched lips. But Joe grips that hand tenderly and brings it up to _his_ lips. Nicky emits a small whine, and Joe shakes his head.

“I know, moon beam. I should’ve been here.”

“I love you,” Nicky says sincerely, then cranes his neck closer to the flask again. He’s quite sure that his throat is going to crumble into ash if he doesn’t get some liquid relief in the next two seconds. And yeah, his throat would grow back, but he’d like to avoid that if he can.

“I love you too,” Joe says with tears in his eyes, pressing his mouth to Nicky’s with life-affirming passion.

Nicky gives up and lies down on the ground. Booker silently snatches back his flask and takes a long swig. It’s too bad Nicky can’t get any. The Irish certainly do know their whiskey.

“What happened, Nicky?” Joe asks, attempting to wipe the soot from Nicky’s face but mostly ends up just smearing it around.

“Fire.”

Joe narrows his eyes, expertly dissecting Nicky’s tone of voice. “Really? You caused the fire?”

Nicky waves a hand that simultaneously means ‘it’s not a big deal’ and ‘I’m fine, really.’

“Were you smoking again?”

“A little.”

“And you fell asleep.”

“I was sleepy.”

“And you didn’t think to jump out the window instead?”

“Five stories? No thanks.”

“Okay, point taken. But this is a serious safety hazard. Really, they should install – I don’t know – tall-ass ladders or something!”

“Lovely idea,” Nicky says, flinging an arm over his eyes.

A woman passing by pauses for a bit, hears the word ‘ladders,’ and looks up at the blackened ruins of the apartment building. An idea begins to take shape.

(“Oh hey, look at that,” Joe remarks brightly to Nicky as the city debuts its inaugural and aptly-named ‘fire escape’ safety feature later that year.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (as you can probably tell, i have not read the comics.)


	2. part 2

4\. the one-eyed cat incident, 1935

If Nicky had to pick just one nemesis to be eradicated for the rest of his eternal life, it would be fundamentalists. They pop up fucking _everywhere_ , and wreak a disproportionate amount of havoc for how small their numbers are. And for how much they love to yell into the void, they are annoyingly difficult to find.

Which is how they end up in Turkey, which has just transformed into a brand new republic helmed by President Atatürk, and is therefore a hotspot for radical dissent and cooking up this decade’s Next Top Terrorist.

They hole up in Istanbul and engage in their usual espionage techniques – surveillance, following dirty money, going undercover (thanks, Joe, you’re the best), and more surveillance. The fact that their apartment sits right above a pastry shop is just a coincidence.

“Coincidence,” Andy reiterates while chewing on a pistachio _katmer_. She brushes the crumbs off her robe and resumes peering through her new Kodak camera, hoping to get a surreptitious photo of a politician rumored to be more of a traditionalist hard-liner. “I love this thing,” she says. “It fits into my pocket.”

“You’re welcome,” Nicky says absently, sipping on a cup of black tea. (Honestly, he got the camera for Andy because Joe mentioned he was tired of being the team’s resident illustrator and having to sketch out every suspicious person they see.)

They follow the politician to several unexciting destinations, get a couple good photos of him and his associates, and trudge back to the apartment where Joe and Booker are already waiting for them.

What they didn’t expect was a one-eyed, scraggly, snaggletoothed cat, who is also waiting for them.

“What is that ugly cat doing here?” Andy asks bluntly. “I thought I said no pets.”

“Don’t look at me,” Booker says, poking a pot of boiled chicken on the stove. “I like dogs.”

Her gaze narrows as it slides over to Joe. He blinks back at her. “It just— followed me home?”

“You know why we don’t have pets,” she says harshly. “I’m going to shower now. It had best be gone by the time I’m done.”

Nicky bends down to take a closer look. It truly is a horrible looking cat. He sighs. “You named it already, didn’t you?”

Joe practically vibrates, like he’s just been waiting to burst with excitement. “Look at her! She’s such a trooper. Think about how many street fights she must’ve gotten into. How many street fights she must’ve _won_.” He gestures grandly at her like she’s a heavyweight boxing champion.

“I don’t want to put her back on the streets either,” Nicky says sympathetically. “But we can’t just take her with us when we leave. This city is her home. There are tons of stray cats here. She’ll be okay.”

Joe looks wounded. “But she followed me home from the mosque,” he pouts. “Allah obviously wants me to take care of her.”

Nicky rubs his face tiredly. “Okay, you can’t just invoke Allah’s name every time you want something.”

The one-eyed cat snarls at him, like _he’s_ the one committing blasphemy.

“Her name,” Joe says stubbornly, crossing his arms, “is Biscotti.”

Nicky tries his best to keep a straight face, but it’s never really worked under the onslaught of Joe’s affections. He smiles, exasperated. “My favorite dessert.”

“And now, your favorite cat,” Joe announces, grinning widely. He picks up Biscotti and thrusts her into Nicky’s face.

Nicky hesitantly reaches out to pet her, but quickly draws back his hand when she hisses mightily at him.

“That’s Nicky,” Joe says proudly to Biscotti. “He’s my husband. Don’t worry, you’ll love him too.”

Biscotti does not look convinced.

“ _Joe_ ,” Andy’s voice thunders from the restroom.

Joe doesn’t often fight against her, preferring to go with the flow, but apparently Biscotti is one of the very few reasons for which he determinedly stands his ground. “She stays, Andy,” he says in a low, dark tone that Nicky rarely ever hears.

Andy storms over and engages in a stare-down with Joe, her wet hair dripping all over the apartment floor. “She goes. Now.”

“If she goes, _I_ go.” Joe says, and there’s a fire in his eyes that oddly reminds Nicky of their Crusading days.

Andy’s jaw tightens and her expression closes up. She knows that if Joe goes, then so does Nicky. There are endless battles they have to fight, but this is not going to be one of them. “Fine. Keep her out of my sight.”

“Fine,” Joe grits out.

Nicky looks down at Biscotti, who’s witnessing the confrontation with a bored expression. “Welcome to the team, Biscotti,” he whispers.

She ignores him, and heads over to the corner of the room where Joe had already arranged a haphazard pile of towels for her. She stomps on them, circling several times before bedding down for the night.

Several weeks pass, and while Joe remains the only person Biscotti actually likes, she somehow begrudgingly contributes, regularly catching rats, snakes, and in one peculiar incident, a cucumber.

Nicky finds himself bringing back small treats for her from his daily excursions, an anchovy here and a chicken kabob there. She horks it all down like it’s her last meal, and Nicky makes the mistake one day of assuming he had finally brought her enough treats to win her love.

“Ow, mother _fucker_ ,” he swears, cradling his hand after she sinks her snaggletooth into it. It hurts like hell but it’s a small puncture wound. He’s had far worse. He’ll just shake it out and go back to feeding her treats from a distance.

Ah, the things he does for Joe. Really, too numerous to count. He should remind Joe of this when he returns later today.

Except later, his hand swells into a purple and green monstrosity, and no amount of ice or medication is making it go down.

“Oh my god, what kind of demon cat are you?” he says faintly in her general direction, before he topples over unconscious.

Biscotti steps gingerly over his body and sits on the windowsill, observing the birds flying by.

Joe coos at her as he inserts the key into the door and lets himself in.

“Did you have a good day, Bisc—? Oh no, Nicky!” Joe cries out, checking his pulse and looking around frantically for blood and guts. But his husband is seemingly dead for no apparent reas—

Joe peers at Nicky’s infected hand. “A poisonous spider,” he gasps. (Biscotti does not refute this erroneous conclusion.)

It takes about ten minutes for the swelling to finally go down and for the infection to clear his system. Nicky wakes with a start and gazes down blearily at his hand. Then he looks up, noting that Joe is climbing up and down the apartment furniture, eyeing the dark corners of the ceiling with the focus of an assassin.

“Joe, dear, what are you doing?”

“Looking for the damned spider that bit you,” Joe says, waving a slipper in his hand.

“I hate to tell you this…” Nicky sighs. “But Biscotti bit me.”

Joe turns to stare at him, then at Biscotti, then back at him. “I know Biscotti doesn’t like you, darling, but she would never—”

“I don’t blame her, Joe,” Nicky says placatingly. “She’s had a tough life. She reminds me a bit of Andy, actually.”

“Ah, don’t let her hear you say that,” Joe says with a wry smile, lowering his slipper. “I’m sorry, my love. I guess cat bites can be pretty fatal.”

“Very fatal,” Nicky corrects.

They both decide not to tell the others about Biscotti’s secret deadly weapon.

Oddly enough, as more weeks pass by, she and Andy seem to come to a tense truce, in the form of brief afternoon naps on the couch. They don’t touch or snuggle, but Biscotti curls up in a patch of sunlight on the armrest above Andy’s head, and Andy doesn’t say anything about it.

Nicky is tempted to take a picture of them together with the Kodak camera, but eventually decides not to (he prefers to stay on Andy’s good side). Instead, he commits this quiet yet momentous occasion to his very long memory.

(“Hey,” Joe says one day, “do you think cats can be immortal?”

Nicky shrugs. “Well, they do have at least nine lives.” He turns to look at Andy. “Maybe back in the old Egyptian days?”

She bites viciously into a slice of _kunefe_. “You want answers? Go to the library.”)

+

5\. the aerial incident, 1942

Russia is predictably bleak and solemn and unforgiving, and it’s certainly not Nicky’s idea of a vacation destination, but World War II is in full swing by this point. So he and Joe had to defer their get-away plans and instead accompany Andy and Booker to assist the Soviet army in defending the Eastern Front.

They stride into a large hangar filled with somewhat obsolete aircraft, and are met by a young, stone-faced woman with her dark hair tightly pulled back.

“Major,” Andy says briskly, nodding her head in respect.

“You made it.” Her eyes flash. “Did you get what we need?”

Andy motions at the team, and they all plunk down the large canvas bags they hauled across the airfield. They unzip the bags, revealing a stash of handheld radios, various guns, and radar detectors. The major’s eyes light up, like the stash is the finest caviar she’s ever seen in her life.

“How much?” she asks, her hands clenched.

“Consider it a gift,” Andy says, lifting an eyebrow.

The major crosses her arms and frowns deeply. Nothing is ever free.

Andy cants her head towards the closest biplane. “All right, we’ll take this one.”

The major barks out a disbelieving laugh. “Hardly worth it. We only get the men’s leftovers.”

“Let me clarify,” Andy says, grinning. “We’re flying with you.” She clasps a firm hand on the major’s shoulder. “Let’s go fuck up some Nazis.”

“Now _that_ I can give you,” the major says with a grim smile. She looks coolly at the rest of the team members. “I should warn you, my regiment is the best. I expect you all to keep up.”

“Aye aye, major,” they echo.

The major snorts and glances at Andy. “If only all men were so comfortable taking orders from a woman.”

“If only,” Andy says, pushing up her sunglasses.

Over the next several months, the team works side by side with the entire all-female regiment, pulling together intelligence sent from various regions under Axis attack – the Caucasus, the Crimea Peninsula, the Byelorussian Republic. Joe and Booker work intensively, hashing out complex calculations with the sortie strategists and bomb-loading crew. Whereas Andy and Nicky prefer to be out on the field (or rather, in the sky), practicing aerial tactics with the pilots whenever the government manages to send over spare fuel.

Of the two of them, Andy is the daredevil, pitching the plane into sudden dives and pushing it just to the edge of its breaking point.

“Andy,” Nicky says from the backseat, clinging tightly, “I know we’re immortal. But do you remember the major mentioning that these planes are kind of old and kind of falling apart?”

“Yeah,” she replies in a specifically absent way that lets Nicky know his question went in one ear and out the other.

“Do you remember that we’re only doing quiet night missions that involve lots of bomb-dropping and zero acrobatics?”

“Uh huh.”

Nicky tries a different tactic. He lets out a very old, very jarring Scythian war cry that Andy taught him ages ago. The plane nearly lurches into a radio tower.

“Jesus Christ, Nicky!”

“Nice save,” he observes calmly.

“Fine,” she snarls, leveling the plane into a steady boring glide. “But next time you decide to scream, scream internally.”

“I always do,” Nicky hums. “Unless I’m with Joe.”

“Ugh,” Andy says, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I regret this whole conversation.”

That evening, the major calls the regiment together, holding an official missive in her hands.

“Comrades, we have our first mission.”

The regiment whoops excitedly, itching to take off and do some serious damage. The major raises a hand and the noise dies down.

“We have two objectives: the first is destroying the German fortifications along the Mius river; the second is attacking the Luftwaffe occupying the Stavropol airport.” She hardens her expression. “Our people are depending on us to defend the motherland. We do _not_ come back until our mission is completed, is that understood?”

“Yes, major!” the regiment cries out.

Nicky stares at them in wonder. He’s been through nearly a thousand years of war and strife, and yet something in his heart breaks with awe at the sight of these courageous young women, who are given nothing but scraps and hand-me-downs yet rise unfailingly to the task. He knows with certainty that every single one is ready to die.

He and Andy share an unspoken look. They will do their best to make sure they don’t have to.

As dusk falls and the pilots prepare to take off, Joe lifts a hand to Nicky’s cheek, ostensibly to help him tighten his helmet, but he uses the pretense to steal a quick kiss.

“Give them hell, darling,” Joe says, his smile lighting up his handsome face.

“Always,” Nicky grins fiercely. “I’ll send your regards.”

“Come back with your shield or on it!” Joe proclaims dramatically. (He couldn’t resist.)

Andy rolls her eyes. “You guys weren’t even alive during the Battle of Thermopylae,” she grumbles.

“Just kidding,” Joe says to Nicky. “I don’t care about the shield. Just come back in one piece.”

“Yes, dear,” Nicky says obligingly.

“Will there ever be a day that you guys scale back on the schmoopy declarations of love?” Booker says drily. “Literally nobody wants to hear it.” 

“You don’t have a single romantic bone in your body,” Joe says accusingly.

“That’s because you’re hoarding all 206 of them,” Booker retorts.

“Ooh, that was a good one,” Nicky concedes. “Haven’t heard that one before.”

“ _If_ you’re ready to join the war effort anytime soon,” Andy cuts in, tapping her boot impatiently.

“Sorry, on it,” Nicky huffs out, jogging towards their plane.

They rattle in their seats as Andy guides the plane onto the runway, and pulls on the thrust lever until they sputter and lift off into the cool night air. They veer to the left, following the first half of the regiment towards the Mius river. Per the plan, their plane will hold up the rear flank, responsible for dropping the last two critical bombs.

“Let me know when we’re nearing Kuybyshevo, so I can idle the engine before the Germans hear us,” Andy says quietly to Nicky, who’s tracking their flight path by virtue of compass and map.

“Roger that,” Nicky says, periodically checking the radar detector to ensure they don’t get separated from the regiment. The moon and stars are hidden behind a thick layer of clouds, which means visibility is shot to shit.

A sudden lashing noise against metal startles them, and Nicky jolts in shock as he shines his flashlight and immediately spots one of the cables attached between the upper and lower wings flying loose.

“Shit,” Andy says, glancing quickly behind her. “Nicky, can you fix that?”

“Yeah, sure,” Nicky says, dragging out the words with limited confidence. He decides to check with Andy again. “Like, while we’re still in the air?”

“Sorry, kiddo,” Andy says. “We can’t afford to fall behind. We’ve only got forty bombs total in the air, and every single one has to count.”

“All right,” Nicky sighs. This is just one more death-defying experience to add under his rather extensive belt. “Make sure to compensate for the balance. I’m going to be weighing down the right side.”

“Yep,” Andy says. “Be careful.”

Nicky eases himself slowly out of the backseat and stretches a long arm until he manages to grasp the nearest steel bar that’s braced between the wings. He then stretches out a long leg until the tip of his boot touches the edge of the lower wing. Taking a deep breath, he launches himself towards the steel bar and collides into it with relief.

He tries not to look down, instead gazing around for the loose cable.

Except a sudden gust of wind whips the cable directly into his face, cutting his jaw with a deep gash and knocking him clear off the wing.

 _Damn it, not again,_ Nicky huffs to himself as he falls rapidly to earth. He had been hoping to go at least a full decade before his next death. But now he has to reset and start all over. (Days without an accident: zero.)

He briefly feels a blinding flash of pain as all his bones break on impact. Then darkness overtakes him.

It takes a few minutes for him to regain consciousness, and he screams as he feels his lungs unpuncture themselves and his bones cracking back into place.

He’s used to dying, but he still doesn’t like it. He peers up into the gloom and strains to listen for plane engines. But all he hears is silence. As it should be – Andy needs to finish the mission without him.

He groans as he rises to his feet, and hobbles over to the nearest tree. He feels around for a patch of moss and luckily finds one. Moss points northward, so that’s where he’ll go.

Eventually, at the break of dawn, he makes it back to the airfield in one relative piece, albeit with a blood-stained flight uniform and an acute bone-deep exhaustion.

“Nicky!” Joe cries out, running towards him.

“Good morning,” Nicky mumbles as he goes slack in Joe’s arms.

“I admire you keeping your promise, but you have really got to stop dying like this,” Joe admonishes, but it falls on deaf ears, as Nicky’s snores puff against Joe’s neck.

With Nicky’s head cradled in his lap, Joe spends the rest of the day consulting with Andy and sewing up a prototype for what he decides to call “floaty air bag for falling out of planes.”

The regiment looks at it for a few seconds before deciding that it would be a good idea to adopt it. But they insist on renaming it “parachute,” and Joe gives them a thumbs up.

+

\+ 1. the choking incident, 1975

The team stares blearily at their small television, which is relentlessly broadcasting the massive casualties sweeping across Southeast Asia. The Viet Cong has seized control of Saigon, the Khmer Rouge is rapidly expanding its merciless regime, and China is still struggling to recover from the great famine from ten years prior, which wiped out upwards of thirty million people.

Andy gets up to turn it off, when the news anchors start launching into debates about whether or not the West should intervene. (She knows they already have for many decades, in many surreptitious ways, which is what tipped over the dominos in the first place. But this is not a surprise. She surmises it never will be.)

“I guess communism isn’t the answer,” Joe says faintly, just to break the heavy silence.

“I’d say men aren’t the answer,” Nicky says sagely. Andy doesn’t disagree.

Booker lets out a long exhale. “Can’t we just— sit this one out? I’m positive they do not want foreigners interfering. One hundred and ten percent positive. Besides, as we all know, the white savior thing never works. Except in movies.”

“I’m not white,” Joe says, mostly out of habit.

Booker gives him a dubious look. “You and Nicky are inseparable. Which makes you, like, fifty percent white.”

“Offensive,” Joe says, glowering. “But accurate.”

“Believe me, I would love nothing more than to sit this one out,” Andy sighs, feeling the full weight of her age. “But the Khmer Rouge is literally massacring whole cities and villages on the spot. Aside from the atomic bomb, I haven’t seen anything this brutal since the olden days. And I mean, like, _biblical_ days.”

“Fuck,” Joe says quietly, elbows on his knees, face buried in his hands. “Fucking hell. After this, I vote we move to the moon. I can’t take this much longer.”

Nicky stands up to put his arms around him, chest against his back, and sighs into Joe’s hair. “We must, Joe. That is our curse. To help the ones who deserve life. Who can’t get it back like we can.”

Joe turns to press his face into Nicky’s stomach and squeezes his waist. “I hate that you’re always right.”

Nicky looks down fondly at him. “That’s my second curse.”

“Booker,” Andy says, “can you get us onto the next plane manifest to Cambodia?”

“Nobody is flying there now except through Vietnam.”

“Okay, fine. Can you get us onto the next plane manifest to Vietnam, _then_ to Cambodia?”

“Do you see this face?” Booker gestures at himself. “This is the face of French occupation. The Vietnamese are not going to want to talk to me.”

“Fucking France. Again. What is up with that?” Joe fumes.

“Narcissism, probably,” Booker says drily. “Also, rude. I haven’t had a French passport for at least fifty years.”

“Does anyone speak Khmer?” Andy forges ahead impatiently.

A beat of silence passes. Somewhere, a cricket chirps.

“Really? No-one bothered to pick it up in the literal centuries that have passed us by?”

Nicky groans. “Andy, I can barely hold on to modern Italian, much less a language rooted in - what is it - Sanskrit?”

She swings around to stare at Joe.

He scoffs. “Why me? You’re the oldest. You had way more free time. I mean, yeah, if Nicky was Cambodian, I would’ve learned it, but—”

“What free time?” Andy snaps. “I was busy trying not to go insane from being the _only fucking immortal_ in the entire world.”

“Okay, guys,” Nicky sighs. “I feel like this crisis is kind of time sensitive. So let’s just go out there and do our best, shall we?”

They do, in fact, proceed to go out to Cambodia and do their fucking best. Which turns out to be a drop in the bucket, in the grand scheme of things. But it’s better than nothing. And that’s really all they’ve been living on since their first days of immortality.

They’re currently trudging through one of the many razed villages, in search of sustenance. Their limbs are heavy and their eyes are bloodshot. (Whoever designed the immortality genome really missed an opportunity to get rid of the base need for food.)

They spot a lone man in the middle of the muddy road with an enormous wok over an open flame and not much else.

“I will take whatever it is you’re cooking,” Andy rasps out, staring greedily into the stir-fried pile of thick rice noodles, assorted vegetables, and - most importantly - meat.

The guy ignores her and continues stirring.

“I will literally give you all of my money.” She holds out a fistful of _riels_ , momentarily forgetting that the Khmer Rouge had just abolished all currency. Her stomach growls loudly.

He looks up at her with deep suspicion, then spies the modified PK machine gun strapped to her back. Without uttering a word, he points to the gun then to the wok.

“Okay,” she says, immediately handing it over.

A brief look of surprise crosses his face before his mouth stretches into a wide grin. He gets up from his crouch and motions for her to take over. “ _Mee ketang_ ,” is all he says, gesturing to the wok, then saunters off with the gun casually draped across his shoulders.

Andy immediately pulls out her travel utensil kit and digs in.

“Oh my god, this is amazing,” she says. Her mouth is full so her words come out somewhat garbled. But the team gets the gist of it.

They dig in as well, determined to get at least a few bites before Andy inhales it all.

Like with many things, especially food things, she is absolutely right. The _mee ketang_ is fucking delicious.

Nicky - because of course he does - manages to choke spectacularly on his last piece of broccoli.

The team just sort of studies him a bit, like they’re curious about what he’ll do. Will he throw himself on the ground to try and expel it? Or will he try to shove it all the way down?

Eventually, Nicky’s face turns red and Joe takes pity on him, giving him several bracing hits on the back. And then, when that doesn’t work, a firm abdominal thrust using two arms wrapped around his diaphragm.

They all watch the broccoli sail into the distance.

“Oh, that was unpleasant,” Nicky coughs out.

“Smaller bites next time, my love,” Joe says, pecking him on the cheek.

(Later, they come across a doctor named Heimlich who’s been searching for years for the perfect food dislodgement technique. Joe magnanimously draws up a diagram for him, which then becomes widely circulated and published in no fewer than ten esteemed medical journals. Joe gleefully frames and hangs every single one on the wall in one of their many (way too many) safe houses.

“Look, Nicky! I’m saving lives. No more broccoli deaths.”

“My hero,” Nicky says cheekily.

“Please desist,” Andy says, grumpily rolling over on the couch and pulling a pillow over her head. “If I don’t nap, I might die for real.”)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alternative fic titles that were briefly considered:
> 
> as i lay dying repeatedly  
> a tale of two dorks  
> low expectations  
> war and mee ketang


End file.
